STATES

Washington: Twitter Inc and law enforcement authorities are investigating alleged threats made by Islamic State militants against the social media network's co-founder and other employees, the company said in reaction to media reports.
Islamic State supporters, in online posts on Sunday, called for attacks against Twitter and its "interests," including death...

Days after prominent aethiest blogger Avijit Roy was hacked to death in Dhaka, protests were held across Bangladesh. Eye witnesses to the incident have now come forward to describe that gruesome attack. He is the second blogger to have been killed and the fourth writer attacked in the Muslim majority...

The King of Jordan spoke publicly about a Jordanian pilot being killed burnt alive by Islamic State militants. King Abdullah II said that his nation is not intimidated by the Islamic State's action.
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London: Newly published emails suggest the man who became known as "Jihadi John" had suicidal thoughts before leaving Britain for Syria.
In an email exchange with the Mail on Sunday five years ago, he talked of taking too many sleeping pills and sleeping forever as a way to get away from...

Beirut: Islamic State released 19 Assyrian Christian captives in Syria on Sunday after processing them through a sharia court, a monitoring group which tracks the conflict said.
More than 200 Assyrians remain in Islamic State hands, said the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, captives from an Islamic State advance last...

New Delhi: To extend free advice on questions of law and offer consultations on matters like property rights, Delhi University is hosting legal aid clinics which will not be restricted only to the varsity fraternity but open to all.
The clinics, which will also impart para-legal training to DU students and...

Mumbai: India will inject 79.4 billion rupees ($1.3 billion) into state-owned banks in the next fiscal year to bolster their capital reserves, a smaller-than-expected sum which means the sector's heavyweights may have to turn to the market or curb lending.
Successive governments have poured billions into India's bad-debt burdened state banks,...

Cairo: More than 25,000 Egyptians have returned from neighbouring Libya since the Islamic State group posted a video earlier this month of the beheadings of Christian compatriots, the foreign ministry said on Friday.
Egypt carried out air strikes against jihadist targets in Libya on February 16 in retaliation for the executions...

New Delhi: Dreaded terror group ISIS and all its affiliate organisations, responsible for series of savage attacks and killings in Iraq and Syria, have been banned in India under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.
Recruitment of youths to the outfit from India and their radicalisation is a matter of serious concern...

World number one Rory McIlroy was "shocked" at the appointment of Davis Love III as 2016 United States Ryder Cup captain.
McIlroy is returning to competition at this week's Honda Classic and teeing up for a first time this year on American soil following a three-week break since winning the Dubai...

New Delhi: Investors looking for India's budget on Saturday to tackle fertiliser subsidies are likely to be disappointed, because sources say the government plans to largely maintain the current regime.
The government was widely expected to deregulate urea prices after freeing up diesel following a fall in crude prices, but two...

Baghdad: A series of bombings in Iraq, including twin blasts in a busy street in a Baghdad suburb, killed at least 40 people and wounded dozens on Tuesday, Iraqi officials said.
The deadliest of the day's attacks came shortly before sunset, when a bomb exploded in Baghdad's southeastern suburb of Jisr...

Amman: Islamic State militants have abducted at least 90 people from Assyrian Christian villages in northeastern Syria, a monitoring group tracking violence in Syria said on Tuesday.
The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said they carried out dawn raids on rural villages inhabited by the ancient Christian minority west of...

Cuttack: The State Vigilance Directorate on Tuesday failed to submit the preliminary enquiry report in the Orissa High court basing on which a graft case was registered against senior IPS officer Prakash Mishra who is now the Director-General of CRPF.
The High Court had last week asked the vigilance to produce...

Damaturu: A teenage girl blew herself up at a crowded bus station in a northeastern Nigerian town on Tuesday, killing at least 15 people and wounding 53 in the second such attack there this week.
No one claimed responsibility for the bombing in Potiskum but the main suspect is likely to...

New Delhi/Mumbai: A severe shortage of attractive malls has made setting up shop in India easier said than done, crimping expansion plans for both foreign retailers such as Lacoste and domestic giants like department store chain Shoppers Stop.
India's searing heat, heavy traffic and cluttered pavements make malls the most popular...

Kuwait City: Kuwait's appeals court sentenced prominent opposition leader Mussallam al-Barrak to two years in jail on Sunday on charges of insulting the Gulf state's ruler, his group said.
The charges relate to a speech he gave to tens of thousands of demonstrators in October 2012 protesting changes to the electoral...

Baghdad: Islamic State (IS) militants burned up to 43 people alive in Iraq's western province of Anbar, a provincial security source said on Saturday.
Earlier, IS fighters captured the 43 Iraqis from the albu-Obeid Sunni tribe in the battlefield town of al-Baghdadi, some 200 km northwest of the Iraqi capital Baghdad,...

Washington: The Internet has become a crucial battleground in the fight against jihadist propaganda and Western nations need to step up their game, according to participants in a Washington meeting on countering radical groups.
Experts say governments must engage in corporate-style marketing if they are to combat the Islamic State, which...

London: Scotland Yard on Friday launched a bid to rescue three missing London schoolgirls, believed to be of Bangladeshi origin, who are feared to have travelled to Turkey to join the dreaded Islamic State terrorists in Syria.
The Metropolitan police counter-terrorism officers raised the alarm after discovering that the three...

Washington: January 2015 was the second warmest on record globally, just behind 2007, with temperatures 0.77 Celsius above the average for the 20th century, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Meteorologists calculated that the United States in January was 1.6 Celsius warmer than normal, making it the...

Washington: In the fight against violent extremism, President Barack Obama has argued the US has one thing going for it that Europe doesn't: a long tradition of warmly embracing its immigrants, including Muslims.
With the Islamic State group spreading and terrorists gaining strength in the Mideast and Africa, Obama has sought...

Maroua: Nigerian forces have killed more than 300 Boko Haram fighters during an operation to recapture 11 towns and villages since the start of the week, the military said on Wednesday, as its war increasingly sucked in neighbours Cameroon, Chad and Niger.
The latest fighting comes as the tide has appeared...

Washington: Here's the thing about impromptu moments in politics: Often they work, sometimes they fall flat, but occasionally they turn out downright awkward. Vice President Joe Biden learned that the hard way Tuesday - twice.
Hosting a White House summit on violent extremism, Biden sought to draw a parallel between Minneapolis,...

New Orleans: A New Orleans jury on Wednesday awarded $14 million to five Indian men who were lured to the United States and forced to work under inhumane conditions after Hurricane Katrina by a US ship repair firm and its co-defendants.
After a four-week trial, the US District Court jury ruled...

The man suspected of killing two people in Copenhagen over the weekend has been identified and appears to have an IS link. Omar Abdel Hamid El-Hussein swore fidelity to IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi on his Facebook page just before the attacks. He was later gunned down by police. The...

Washington: Over 60 countries including India will participate in a White House summit on "countering violent extremism" beginning Tuesday in the backdrop of alarming growth of ISIS and recent terrorists' attacks in France and Denmark, senior administration officials have said.
While the first two days of the three-day summit are...

Cairo: Egypt on Monday launched airstrikes against Islamic State targets in Libya after the extremist group released a grisly video showing the beheading of several Egyptian Coptic Christians it had held hostage for weeks.
A spokesman for the Armed Forces General Command announced the strikes on state radio on Monday,...

Cairo: A video purporting to show the mass beheading of Coptic Christian hostages was released on Sunday by militants in Libya affiliated with the Islamic State group.
The killings raise the possibility that the Islamic militant group - which controls about a third of Syria and Iraq in a self-declared caliphate...

New Delhi: The newly sworn-in Arvind Kejriwal government in Delhi has decided to hold regular briefings with media to disseminate information on its new plans, projects and policies.
The briefing will take place on all working days at 4 PM starting February 17, said a circular issued.
"To keep the media...